Jessica Williams

just took my General two weeks ago after being a tech for like a year and a half. the electrical theory section tripped me up a little, stuff like impedance and resonant circuits but if you watch some of the KB6NU or dave casler videos on youtube it clicks way faster than just reading. i probably watched like 4 or 5 of his videos and then drilled hamstudy for maybe 3 weeks and passed with an 88 i think.
also one thing nobody told me before i studied -- some of the questions on the actual exam feel worded slightly different than the practice ones so dont just memorize the answers, try to actually understand whats being asked at least a little bit. caught me off gaurd on a couple questions but still passed so it wasnt a huge deal

WAZ is Worked All Zones — the world is divided into 40 CQ zones and you need to work one station from each zone. it's actually a really fun one to chase because some zones are pretty rare and you have to actually think about propagation and timing to get them all, not just wait for a big DX station to show up on a pile-up
as for which one first, honestly just work whatever sounds good on the bands and let the awards sort of chase themselves. most people end up with decent progress on WAS pretty quickly because US stations are everywhere, and DXCC builds up faster than you'd expect especially if you hit the low bands during good conditions. LoTW is definitely accepted for all three, you dont need paper cards unless you really want them or for specific rare entities that only confirm via paper
23 entities in 8 months on 100w and a dipole is actually pretty solid, keep at it

i mostly just use the QRZ one because im already logged in there checking callsigns anyway lol. but i did download an app called DX Toolkit a while back and that's pretty handy when im on the couch and just want to see whats happening on the bands without going to the shack. theres a few iOS apps that show cluster spots too but i cant remember the names off the top of my head, one of them had a map view which was kinda cool to see where spots were coming from geographically.

so i just passed my technician exam last week and i'm trying to figure out what handheld to actually buy. everyone keeps telling me different things and i'm kind of overwhelmed. some people say get the baofeng uv-5r because its cheap and fine to learn on, other people act like i just insulted their family by suggesting it. then theres the yaesu ft-60r which seems popular but its like three times the price and i cant really tell what you're actually getting for that extra money.
i mostly want to hit the local repeaters and maybe do some simplex with a buddy of mine who lives like 8 miles away. not doing anything fancy. do i really need to spend $150+ or is the cheap route genuinely okay for just getting started

oh man i remember this exact wall, hit it right around 6-7wpm myself and was convinced i'd never get faster. the thing that actually helped me — and i know this sounds weird — was to stop practicing at my comfortable speed and instead listen to stuff way above what i could copy. like set your lcwo character speed to 20wpm even if your effective speed is still low. your brain starts learning the rhythm of the letters as whole sounds instead of counting elements. took me probably a month before it started clicking but when it did it really did click.
also dont go back to the earlier characters, i made that mistake too. just keep pushing forward on Koch even when it feels hopeless. the repetition is doing more than you think even when it feels like nothing is sticking. and give yourself a break every few days, sometimes i'd come back after two days off and suddenly letters i was struggling with felt easier. no idea why that works but it does.

yeah what he said. also just download the arrl band plan pdf and tape it to your wall or whatever, thats what i did when i was starting out. took me a while to really internalize it but eventually you just kinda know where to go without thinking about it.
one thing that always confused me early on was that the band plan and the part 97 rules are two completely different things and people mix them up constantly even guys who've been licensed forever. the rules are what you legally have to follow, the band plan is more like etiquette. both matter but for different reasons

WAS first is honestly a pretty natural starting point for a lot of US hams because its achievable pretty quick if you work the bands regularly, especially on 40 and 80 at night. You're already at 34 confirmed which is great for 8 months in. finish that one off and getting the certificate in the mail is a good feeling, motivates you to keep going.
For DXCC, you apply when you hit 100 confirmed entities on LoTW — you pay a one time application fee and then after that additional endorsements (when you hit 150, 200, etc) cost a bit but not terrible. The credits just sit in your account and ARRL tracks them. You dont have to do anything special just keep logging and confirming via LoTW.
WAZ is trickier yeah, some zones are genuinely rare and you can go months without hearing anything from zone 23 or parts of zone 26 depending on conditions. Totally doable from the midwest but you might be waiting on the right opening or a DXpedition. Id say chase all three simultaneously honestly — when something comes on that you need, you work it regardless of which award its for. Thats kind of the whole fun of it.

welcome to the rabbit hole lol. i joined ARES about two years into the hobby and was pretty nervous about it too. the ICS stuff (like ICS-100 and 700) threw me a bit at first because it feels really bureaucratic but you get used to it and it actually makes sense once you see how an activation runs. some groups require you to complete those online FEMA courses before you can deploy, so worth checking with your EC ahead of time if thats a requirement locally.
the training exercises are honestly the best part, weve done simulated hospital communication drills and one big county-wide exercise where we supported the EOC. that was a lot of fun even though it was basically just passing traffic and filling out ICS forms for 4 hours. sounds boring written out but in the moment it feels pretty real. anyway definitely go to the meeting, worst case you decide its not for you.

i put a lip mount on my jeep because i also didnt want to drill and honestly after about a year the cable got pinched at the door seal and i started getting noise into the receive. had to reroute the whole thing. so yeah, firsthand experience, they work but they're more hassle than they look in the youtube videos

the dupe thing across modes in N1MM has bitten me too, i think theres a setting somewhere in the contest config for how strict it checks but i never bothered figuring it out for casual operating because like you said it wasnt really designed for that. for WSJT-X i actually just let WSJT-X keep its own log and then export to ADIF periodically and import wherever i want, bit of a workaround but its clean enough. probably not what you want to hear if youre trying to keep everything in sync in real time though.